Richard North of the EU Referendum sends word of this new paper. I’m sure Greenpeace won’t be amused as more polar bears turn into dumpster divers with this new influx of miners and drillers in the new ice free future.
After the Ice Melts: Conflict Resolution and the International Scramble for Natural Resources in the Arctic Circle
Wei-en Tan, Department of Diplomacy, National Chengchi University, Yu-tai Tsai Institute of Strategic and International Affairs Studies, National Chung Cheng University No. 64, Sec. 2, Chinan Rd., Taipei 11605, Taiwan (PDF available here )
Abstract
It is a well-known fact that global warming is melting the Arctic ice cap.
As this happens, the natural resources in the Arctic will become available for exploitation. As such, the five countries with major claims to the region—the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, and Norway—are looking to extend their claims to the natural resources beneath the ice-covered ocean. The size of the Arctic Shelf is about 4.5 million square kilometers, and the U.S. Geological Survey posits that 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas and oil reserves may be there. Clearly, there are large amounts of untapped resources that these five countries could use to satisfy their increasing demand for development and economy.
This paper will try to explore the current disputes over Arctic seabed resources surrounding the five states in North Pole, evaluate the regimes for resolving the conflict in UNCLOS. Furthermore, the paper will introduce the appropriate points
of view and discuss the alternative dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) for this significant problem caused by global warming in the coming future.
…
It is very clear that the Arctic region stands at the threshold of significant changes. The increasing rate at which the Arctic ice is melting will surely have a major impact on local ecosystems and the potential exploitation of natural resources. By virtue of their sovereign rights and jurisdiction, the five countries with claims to the Arctic region are presently at a critical juncture for addressing their current and future conflicts of interest. This paper explores the current disputes over Arctic Ocean resources and evaluates the mechanisms in UNCLOS for resolving these kinds of disputes. Furthermore, this paper introduces the viewpoints and discusses the alternative dispute settlement mechanisms (DSM) which can be employed to solve this kind of significant problem.
…
Conclusion
Global warming has not only challenged the authority of UNCLOS and its legal regime for resolving disputes relating to the continental shelf under the Arctic Ocean, but has also marked the beginning of the end for freedom of the high seas in the Arctic region. In addition to its environmental implications, global warming has caused a shift in the way the international community regards the Arctic, shifting the paradigm away from physical dominion and towards control over resources on the sea floor. The unprecedented access to untapped resources brought about by the receding permafrost in the Arctic Circle may soon cause an international gold rush as well as a variety of conflicts.
The conflicts over the Arctic region are unlikely to be resolved within the very near future. With five major states making claims to extensive parts of the Arctic seabed, there is a lot of scientific and professional work that needs to be done. Fortunately, there has been one good development since the conflict began. On May 28, 2008, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States came together for the Arctic Ocean Conference in Greenland. (Note 66) The goal of the Conference, initiated by Denmark’s Foreign Minister, was to foster unity and cooperation in the Arctic area so as to prevent an environmental catastrophe. The result of the Conference was the Ilulissat Declaration. This document states that no new legal framework will be set up to govern the Arctic. Instead, the parties agreed to proceed using the guidelines set forth in UNCLOS. (Note 67) While this Declaration is not necessarily ground-breaking, it is encouraging in that it signals a willingness of the involved Arctic states to work together in settling their disputes.
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Whenever I read something that starts, ‘it is a well known fact that….”, my bogosity meter is already heading towards high signal territory.
Quoting:
“It is a well-known fact that global warming is melting the Arctic ice cap.”
Commenting:
Please look at this graph:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Notice that today (red line), we are virtually tied for the Largest Area of Arctic Sea Ice for this date for the LAST 8 YEARS. Notice that last year in May (orange line) the sea ice set a New Record HIGH. Notice that last year (orange again) the summer minimum was One MILLION square kilometers MORE sea ice than 2007. That is to say, 25 PERCENT – or one forth – MORE!
The FACT is that arctic sea ice is GROWING! (thump, thump,thump…is this thing on…do they hear me out there…?)
This mantra is getting so old that the chicken can’t even HAVE eggs anymore!
Cluck cluck.
Quoting: Smokey (17:10:15) :
“But there’s plenty of hydrocarbons on Titan”
Commenting:
Few people appreciate what we have learned from Titan: That hydrocarbons can be produced by non biological processes (which is not a favored viewpoint in petroleum science) OR…that there is life on Titan! No gettin’ around it. It’s one or the other!
If Tommy Gold was right with his Deep Hot Biosphere, then oil isn’t a problem. It’s the cockamamy belief that oil is biogenic that is the problem. The Russians and Vietnamese must be laughing besides themselves with the self inflicted economy destroying nonsense of the West.
There is an implication in the article that oil & gas exploration in Arctic waters is not currently happening & that this would somehow change in the future with less arctic ice.
Not True.
There is both exploration & production currently ongoing in Arctic waters.
See links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3124268420100331?type=marketsNews
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/press-release/shoi_shell-one-step-closer-to-drilling-in-beaufort-chukchi-seas-708856.html
http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-alaska/983129-1.html
http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/premier_ooguruk/
(The last link is my favorite as it is a discovery my company made)
http://www.adn.com/2010/02/16/1142601/eni-petroleum-set-to-produce-nikaitchuq.html
(This is my second favorite as this is another discovery we made which will be coming online later this year)
http://www.offshore-mag.com/index/article-display/351398/articles/offshore/production/russia/gazprom-looks-at-offshore-arctic.html
http://www.offshore-environment.com/russianoil.html
http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=00013314&soc=SPE
etc, etc – I wont bore you with further links (although there are tons more). Needless to say, Arctic Oil & Gas operations are very active right now in all the countries listed above, regardless of what arctic ice is doing.
This reads like a high school term paper.
If the island is “floating” then there would be no threat from Global Warming because it would just float a bit higher in the water as the poles melt.
I actually feel a little guilty for this comment because I want to applaud the IJIS for putting their data online for public scrutiny. However, the following is the sort of non-scientific fudge that we all find annoying:
“The black dot seen at the North Pole is an area lacking data where AMSR-E cannot observe the Earth’s surface due to the limit of its observational coverage (i.e., orbit inclination of 98deg. and swath width of 1600km). Please note that this area is also counted as sea-ice cover in our estimation of sea-ice extent. We may change the policy (i.e., filling the gap with full coverage of sea ice) in the near future due to the recent drastic reduction of Arctic sea ice. We will announce this if it is implemented.”
I have two problems with this: the first is that their procedure to deal with the missing data is not to compute statistics that are not sensitive to this data gap but to infill the gap with interpolations and then mix that into the actual data set; and, the second is that their procedure is entirely ad hoc — instead of infilling in a bias free fashion they’ve arbitrarily decided that the pole is iced over and intend to arbitrarily decide that it’s not iced over at some other time. This is just not a “data careful” methodology.
This sounds so much like the old “I’ve got some (swamp) land in Florida you might be interested in.”
Don’t these speculators even do due diligence regarding the prospects? Or do they just read the liberal rags for important information before making plans for drilling?
It’s a well-known fact that monkeys fly out of my nose each morning.
I know I have asked the unaskable before, but one of these days I’ll get a good response.
Much ado about Sea Level rise when in reality it’s more like Sea Level creep.
What are the implications of Sea Level drop (besides the offlining of the Suez and Panama Canals)?
Robert Kral (21:03:16) :
It’s a well-known fact that monkeys fly out of my nose each morning.
That’s REALLY got to hurt….unless, of course, they are sea monkeys!
Hmmmm…. I have a feeling that oil leases on the moon might be more economic…. Bruce Willis could bring in a wildcat….
Joe (17:29:57) :
“The Trans Arctic pipeline…hmmm.
Quite the logistics problem to get oil to market would you not think?
Companies could loose their shirts in this one.”
lol, Joe. We offshore pipe-liners are a hardy and inventive bunch of people but truth to tell, I, for one, will stick with “Pulling Pipe” where it is warmer especially as Obama has decided to open up some new areas. Wonder what the EPA think about his decision
Truely AMAZING.
The level of ignorance, incompetance (or outright lying fraud) of these people is stunning.
If they havent even made the effort to check the data for Arctic sea ice level, and they publish this rubbish, then these fools should be sacked.
NEWS ALERT FOR THESE FOOLS – ARTIC SEA ICE IS INCREASING, AND IS AT NORMAL LEVELS AS WE SPEAK.
It is a well-known fact that global warming can not melt the Arctic Ice! Only regional warming could. Regional warming could be caused by global warming, of course, but global warming cannot directly melt anything. Other changes, like more sunlight or changing ocean currents could also melt the Arctic Ice. Since observations of clouds in the Arctic show a decrease in low clouds at the same time as the reduce in ice cover, it is likely that this is the main cause of the Arctic Ice melt. After all, less low cloud cover means more sunligth reaching the surface, leading to more rapid ice melt in the summer.
This hole thing is B.S. because they drill through the arctic ice in the winter, because it is easier to resupply traveling on the ice, over ice roads.
links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Road_Truckers
http://www.history.com/shows/ice-road-truckers/videos/ice-road-truckers-2-river-ice-roads#ice-road-truckers-2-river-ice-roads
http://www.history.com/shows/ice-road-truckers/videos/ice-road-truckers-2-aboriginal-populations#ice-road-truckers-2-extreme-cold
one more lol
http://www.history.com/shows/ice-road-truckers/videos/ice-road-truckers-2-river-ice-roads#ice-road-truckers-2-ocean-ice-roads
It was not Leif Erikson that discovered Greenland. It was his father Erik the Red, and it happened in 986 AD.
Leif Eriksson got off course going to Greenland and discovered America instead c. AD 1000.
Very funny quote from Pravda March 25:
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/25-03-2010/112732-climate_russia-0
“Canada’s new-found megalomania is the least of Russia’s worries: How can climate change in the Arctic threaten her national security? ”
“From Canada, Russia has become used to seeing and hearing positions of sheer arrogance, unadulterated insolence and provocative intrusion. Take for example Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s declaration that Canada is “an Arctic Superpower”………”
Arctic 10 minute storm-in-a-teacup has hotted right up! Unlike the ice.
Darn these provocative Canadians!
I never thought I’d see the day when Norway and Denmark were referred to as ‘major states’.
Now this is going to be fun bearing in mind:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
and that Arctic ice was thicker than expected In 2009
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/research_aircraft_polar_5_finishes_arctic_expedition_unique_measurement_flights_in_the_central_arc/?cHash=e36036fcb4
For those who were told and who repeat the canard that Canute thought he could roll back the tide, not so: Canute used the inevitablity of the tide as a parable, as many shrewd teachers do, to teach his followers that there were some things outside his influence.
And who said that Chinese academics have no sense of humour?
Save this page as it wii be “adjusted” no doubt the’ve done it every time this happens
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic